[Info-vax] [OT] Wirth style languages, was: Re: Obscure Ada compiler vendors?

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <kjknjk$orj$3 at speranza.aioe.org>,
	glen herrmannsfeldt <gah at ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
> Bill Gunshannon <bill at server1.cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
> 
> (snip)
> 
>> I wish they still taught COBOL at a later point and probably in a special
>> course, but I see no reason to cover Fortran in anything but a general
>> Programming Languages Course where you show them differnt languages and
>> the pardigms attached to them but no one becomes proficient.
> 
> Maybe, but Fortran today isn't anything like the one from 25 years ago.

IMHO hacking OO onto languages desigend for an older paradigm is just
plain wrong.  Fortran had a specific purpose.  Most o fthe work doing
that today needs to be very parallel.  I have not wroked much with
Fortran beyond 77 but I odubt it is optimized for parallel computing.

>  
>> Pascal was always a good choice, afterall, isn't that what Wirth created
>> it for?   And, wether I like it or not, students today must learn the
>> OO paradigm and that most likely means Java which is what they use where
>> I used to work and I imagine most other CS Departments.
> 
> How about Algol W? (I believe the W is Wirth.)

I believe Algol was designed as a normal application programming language.
Pascal was specifically intended to teach algorithms and data structures.
It was not intended to become what it is today or see the uses it has seen
over time.  Unless all those books lied thirty years ago.

Sad as it sounds, Java (which is the CS language du jour) is probably the
right choice.

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>